When a user initiates a telephone call or another type of telecommunications session with a far-end party, the user often does so without knowing whether the far-end party will be in a friendly mood when he or she answers the phone. However, if the user has access to information about the far-end party's mood, the user can plan accordingly and make the call when the far-end party is likely to be friendly. In a similar fashion, if the user has information about the availability of the far-end party, the user can select a time for the telephone call in which the far-end party is most likely to answer the phone.
Indications of availability and mood are often provided by telephony and instant messaging applications, such as Skype™. These applications use centralized presence servers to provide the availability and mood information. In general, the presence servers store status information about network users which has been submitted by the users themselves. And also, the presence servers distribute the status information for any particular user to the other users in the network. Thus, in order for a network user to obtain status information about another user, the first user has to connect to a presence server and obtain the information from there.
This approach, however, suffers from several disadvantages. First, the maintenance of presence servers is costly. Second, the information stored by the presence servers is not reliable because people often do not update their status as it changes. For instance, if the availability of a doctor changes frequently during the course of a busy day, the doctor is unlikely to connect to the presence server and update his or her status every time the doctor frees up and has half-an-hour to talk on the phone.
Third, the information posted on a presence server by a person is not an objective assessment of the person's true status. When users provide presence, availability, disposition and other types of information about themselves, this information reflects their own subjective view of these characteristics. For example, a person may submit to a presence server an indication that he or she is available to participate in telecommunications sessions, in a good mood, and with a high energy level. However, when a caller calls the person, the caller may find that the person has only a few minutes to talk, seems grumpy, and yawns frequently, thus exhibiting low energy levels. Put simply, because it is not an objective assessment of the person's status, the information posted on the presence server can be misleading.
For these reasons, the need exists for an improved method for detection of status information about users in telecommunications networks.